Smart sensing giving eyes to emergency responders
Catastrophic bushfires burning around populated areas have forced NSW into a week-long state of emergency. “Fires are starting extremely quickly, easily and spreading very, very quickly,” commissioner of the RFS, Shane Fitzsimmons said to the reporters on Monday.
The bushfires have taken lives, injured people and burned down properties across NSW and have led to more than 600 school closures around NSW and Queensland. In dreadful conditions as such, smart sensing can play a vital role in assisting the firefighters with incidents requiring emergency evacuations.
NSW fire safety company, E-Visuals, is set to revolutionise how first responders evacuate buildings in an emergency. The new project, dubbed Incident, fuses data from in-building sensors, known local hazards and publicly available information to create a single, easy to use building emergency management platform. The NSW Smart Sensing Network (NSSN) facilitated the development of Incident through partnership with the University of Wollongong’s SMART Infrastructure Facility.
Mr Matt Lynch, E-Visuals Managing Director, is a professional firefighter for over 13 years. As an incident commander, Matt has experience responding to different emergencies.
“At many incidents that I’ve been the first arriving officer at a commercial facility, the only information from the fire panel is the fire location. If you ask about occupancy, hazardous materials, a lot of times that information isn’t present, or you haven’t got the right person there to help you out,” said Matt. “I saw the same problems at every emergency, and that led me to think about the problem and try and find the solution.”
Firefighters currently struggle with lack of initial information when responding to emergency incidents. The emergency responders may have a list of general characteristics of the site, so they usually send their emergency services — two fire trucks — as an initial response.
“Once they get eyes on the incident, they make their tactical decisions from there,” Matt said. “So what we’re trying to do is speed up that process by getting more information out so they can make earlier tactical decisions.”
Incident is a platform that provides the emergency responders with essential information from facilities that they require, on the site or prior to their arrival.
Incident uses existing CCTV to analyse the images and count people in different areas. “Part of the technology uses artificial intelligence or computer imaging, and it can differentiate between firefighters and building occupants,” added Matt. “We hope to be able to identify mobility-impaired persons as well.”
Incident also provides relevant data from other sources such as the hazardous materials database to provide the emergency responders with the quantity and the location of the hazardous material in the building. Incident will allow the emergency responders to make informed decisions and “not going in as blind as they currently are now.”
Matt was introduced to the NSW Smart Sensing Network (NSSN) at a networking function at UNSW when he had the idea for Incident. “I wanted to work with academics, but I had no idea where to start,” Matt said. “The NSSN organised around eight meetings with different academics who had different skill sets, but were similar to what I wanted to do and assisted me in getting my grant from the New South Wales Government.”
The project is supported by a NSW Department of Industry TechVoucher and the NSW Smart Sensing Network. It will be developed in the Nandin Deep Technology Incubator, ANSTO’s new innovation precinct.
Providing the correct information, when it’s needed will help emergency responders to deal with emergencies more efficiently. Incident is set to help save innocent lives.
Media: Shahrzad Abbasi — 0466548145